I'm a young American woman in Milan...and you're not. I go to La Scala a lot...and you don't.

Lohengrin

December 08, 2012

Last night under Milan's first snowfall, Teatro alla Scala opened its 2012-13 season with a new Wagner Lohengrin from German theatre director Claus Guth. Fat snow dampened Milan's elegant opera house season premiere, sober and bloodless, packed with more politicians (PM Mario Monti trailed by five ministers), bankers, managers and high-roller business dudes than the usual pseudo-celebrities.

Newspaper coverage was as lean as this year’s crop of protestors across Piazza della Scala, who rallied about deep unemployment and job cuts (overheard, "We won't pay for your crisis.") Luckily we had Milan's die-hard art ambassadors such as Marta Marzotto, Roberto Bolle and Carla Fracci for cultural backbone, and what the audience lacked in star power twinkled from onstage -- Jonas Kaufmann as the Swan Knight, Rene Pape as Heinrich and Scala's MD Barenboim guided its orchestra into sweet deliciousness.

Nice surprise of the night? Since President Giorgio Napolitano wasn't in attendance (he was prompted a few days ago to pen a letter to Barenboim to explain his la prima della Scala absence was dictated by pre-election business -- not in protest of La Scala's decision to pass up Verdi for Wagner to open its current season in this year of Verdi/Wagner bicentennial), Barenboim relegated Inno del Regno d'Italia to post-opera with a costumed cast breaking into the national anthem at the final curtain call.(Marta Marzotto)

Guth's haunted, symbolically-rich tale of the Swan Knight exhibited neurotic, anxious, traumatized protagonists -- emo kids who had forgotten to take their Adderall and Zoloft -- hopeless Generation X'ers fatalistically aware that they are doomed to failure and lonliness. Props to Elsa, sung by the courageous Annette Dasch, who flew into Milan literally the evening prior to replace principal Anja Harteros, who had cancelled the final dress on December 4 and was replaced by Ann Petersen who also caught whatever illness brewed backstage and equally bowed out of opening night. Jonas Kaufmann triumphed as the barefoot son of Parsifal for his sensitive, introspective performance, followed by Ortrud's effortless Evelyn Herlitzius and Telramund's Tomas Tomasson.

(Annette Dasch)

OC's official reviews for Opera Now and Grazia.it exit next week. To see photos of Bolle and Fracci (and other images from opening night) hit up OC's twitter.

December 06, 2012

Last night, OC was in Piermarini's elegant cream & gold-leaf den for its final dress anteprima of Lohengrin that officially opens the Teatro alla Scala 2012-13 season on December 7, the feast day of Milan's patron saint, Saint Ambrose. The past few years, Scala's been test driving its la prima for the Scala Under30 club with a 10$ cover charge, and last night the house was packed full of fresh-faced Wagner virgins.

OC was invited by la Scala to live-tweet Claus Guth's new production of Wagner's son of Parisfal, and her chipped Chanel Pêche Nacrée can attest to rapid-fire 140s fired-off for six hours straight. *cracks knuckles, racks-up hashtags and asperands* In case you missed it, you can relive its full glory on OC's stream, Teatro alla Scala's stream, along with in-house twitterers Massimo Bernardini and Matteo Bordone.

In today's Corriere, Guth spoke to Giuseppina Manin about his new production, based on Wagner's inspiration of Grimms' Fairy Tales. He cast Elsa as a woman with wide-ranging emotional disorders, the payload from losing her parents and her little brother at a young age, which triggers a whole boatload of incestuous issues around her knight-in-shining-incest, Lohengrin.

For Lohengrin, a "hero without identity", Guth drew on the 19th century case of a mysterious teenage boy, Kaspar Hauser, who appeared in the streets of Nurbenberg and claimed that he had been raised in total isolation during the years that Wagner wrote the opera. Hauser was fatally stabbed five years later and rumors arose that he was the hereditary prince of Baden, switched at birth.

Guth concluded: "They were turbulent years, in 1848, Europe ignited a thousand revolts, Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party and this was only a couple months after Wagner had deployed to Dresden at the side of the anarchist Bakunin. The industrialism and capitalism of today was born then. It's a crucial moment in history that gave rise, a reaction, the desire to return to the past, a legendary world and irrationality. Lohenrin's a romantic opera born in a time that lived many realists. But behind the curtains of the story comes the disturbed ghosts of a present threat."

July 25, 2010

Bayreuther Festspiele 2010 is about to get real and OC has exclusive photos of German director Hans Neuenfels' brand new Wanger Lohengrin production. Neuenfels collaborated with Reinhard von der Thannen's costume design for technicolor leads anchored by a rat-suited chorus. Swans, rodents, and Jonas Kaufmann's hair...it's like Wild Kingdom up in Bayreuth. What's not to love? Conductor Andris Nelsons is all over Kaufmann's high profile Bayreuther Festspiele debute and we're all over these photos. Who put the rodents all up in Lohengrin? Our hero, that's who.

January 20, 2007

Since she's back to the US for a visit, Opera Chic won't be able to check out personally La Scala's Lohengrin -- not to mention, she does have some issues, musical and nonmusical, with Herr Wagner, but we'll leave that to some other post in the future. The coverage in the Italian press and the comments of Opera Chic's Milanese friends anyway do seem to converge: big kudos to young Milanese conductor Daniele Gatti (Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of Teatro Comunale di Bologna's orchestra), mad props to signora Waltraud Meier's devilish Ortrud (the diminishing power of the voice she so generously put on the line for all her career notwithstanding). The production's problems? Well, Robert Dean Smith's Lohengrin (in an opera called Lohengrin, after all, this is probably not the smallest issue) does seem to have too small a voice -- not to mention his voice cracked at least once during la prima -- and the costumes designed by Bettina Walter (Lohengrin sports a shiny metallic suit for no apparent reason) are indeed problematic.

The director's decision to place the action in the 1940's, again for no apparent reason, has raised eyebrows (not to mention HELLO TEHRE IS NO SWAN WTF WHARES TEH SWAN)?

And the sets? Well, our loggionisti friends would have loved to see everything better, but apparently a lot of the action happens to be placed waaay too deep inside the stage; so if you have seats in the galleria, you are SOL. LOL GET SOME MOAR XPENSIVE SEATS THEIR ONLY 240 BUX OR SOMETHING GET A MORTGAGE OR SOMETHING IF YOU WANNA SEE OUR LOHENGRIN OR WAIT 4 TEH OVRPRICED DVD K THX BI lol Go ask your parents for more allowance money. I'll be standing over here with my 40-digit salary, buying-out all the seats in La Scala for a private performance.